


Bike

by UPlover



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: 2017 Pennywise (IT), Angst, Comfort, Friendship, Gen, Movie: IT (2017), Reddie, Reddie comfort, Richie Tozier Loves Eddie Kaspbrak, The Losers Club Love Each Other (IT), broken arm, pennywise - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-13
Updated: 2020-03-13
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:40:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23134063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UPlover/pseuds/UPlover
Summary: After the encounter with Pennywise in Niebolt, Richie checks up on Eddie.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Kudos: 34





	Bike

Sitting in his bed, Eddie didn’t dare turn off the lights fearing that the clown’s terrifying face would stalk him in the night. He was exhausted, fighting sleep, pinching himself to stay awake. He had to be careful how roughly he pinched himself. His mother would have a fit once again taking him to the hospital.

Aside from pinching himself, his arm was keeping him awake, too. It hurt. His arm was going to hurt for a while now; months. A tear rolled down his cheeks as he tried to get used to the pain. The moment they rushed into the emergency room, his mother made a scene, frantically calling out for help acting as if Eddie had been murdered, which he wasn’t (thankfully). She even threatened to hit a doctor if he made one wrong move with Eddie when all he was doing was lifting him onto a gurney. It was so embarrassing!

All Eddie could give as an explanation for what had happened to his arm was that he just fell. Hysterical, his mother blamed his friends calling them animals. Eddie bit his tongue as the doctor disapproved, telling him that he deserved better friends.

Was he right?

Eddie heard a noise. Snapping his neck to the window, Eddie quickly sat up in bed, his eyes wide in terror. Why would his mother leave the window open? For the biggest worry-wort that she was his mother was an airhead, too!

Richie burst up in the window, happily. “Hey, Eds!”

Eddie screamed, his voice shrieking. He was so frantic that he whacked himself in the face with his flailing arms. Climbing in through the window, Richie put his arms out in front of him, waving at Eddie. “Relax, it’s just me, Eddie!”

“Jesus fuck, Rich! Do you want to give me a heart attack?! That’s actually possible for a thirteen-year-old if you didn’t know! And my mother is asleep! If she wakes up than she is going to kill you! Literally!”

Richie smirked. “Isn’t she a heavy sleeper?”

Eddie gave him the finger. That was when Richie noticed the cast. His heart fell into the pit of his stomach. Seeing Eddie’s broken arm made his stomach turn. How he didn’t vomit when he set it back into place was beyond him. And he never did that before. 

“What are you doing here?” Eddie asked him, relaxing in his bed. He looked very tired. Not to mention, bothered. Richie would feel the same if he had a face to face meeting with Pennywise like Eddie had experienced today.

“I brought your bike back,” Richie told him as he walked over to the bed so he could be closer to his friend. Anything to make him feel better.

Eddie looked at him strangely. “My bike? But my bike was back at-” That was when he realized, his mouth gaping. “No, Richie, you didn’t!”

Sitting on the bed, Richie put a calming hand on his shoulder. “It’s okay!”

“No, it’s not okay!” Eddie’s voice rose. Feeling short of breath, he reached over to his nightstand and swiped his inhaler. Richie pet his shoulder. Today Eddie’s whole face went pale when they were inspecting trajectories of the Neibolt house in Bill’s garage. It was strange how Eddie needed his inhaler in stressful situations rather than the occasions where he vigorously rode his bike or ran.

“What were you going to do? Get it yourself?” Richie asked him with a shrug.

Eddie dipped his head in shame, sighing. “I don’t think my mother is ever going to let me out of the house again after what happened today.”

Richie nodded in understanding. “I don’t know how much you’re going to be using your bike anyway.”

“What do you mean?”

Replaying the images in his mind, Richie had no idea if it were a good thing if Eddie was absent or not from the fight. Things got pretty out of control. He was the first to angrily march off. And everyone else followed going their separate ways.

“Bill punched me in the face,” Richie admitted, gritting his teeth. It wasn’t like Henry Bowers who only threatened to punch people. Bill didn’t hold back, smacking him right across the face, knocking Richie onto the ground. After he rode away on his back, Richie cried once he was completely alone. Why would someone like Bill punch him? He thought that Bill was his best friend.

“Bill did what?” Eddie asked, astonished. He looked over Richie’s face trying to see if a bruise had formed. “What happened to make him punch you?”

Bowing his head in shame, Richie wished he never said what he said. “It was about Georgie.”

Shutting his eyes, Eddie sighed. “Rich…”

“No, I know, okay! But, he needed to hear it! Do you see all the crazy shit he’s getting us into? He’s taking this too far! Look what happened to you!” Richie indicated to Eddie’s broken arm.

Based on Eddie’s reaction, he shouldn’t have brought that up either. When they had gone upstairs in the Niebolt house, Eddie was separated from them. And somehow he ended up in the kitchen with… IT. Richie was never going to forgive himself for not paying any attention to him. It all could have been avoided.

“Eddie, I’m sorry we didn’t stick together. I should have-”

“IT knew!” Eddie interrupted him, barely sparing a glance. “I heard someone calling my name when we were upstairs. And then after the door slammed shut, something touched my shoulder. The leper. God, it was so disgusting! A-And then I passed out, and I fell into the kitchen. When I woke up, my arm - it was broken! B-But then the fridge… It moved. God, when I came home I was so scared of the fridge that started shivering! Mom thought I was cold.” He even shivered at the thought of it. “Then… the fridge opened and that clown came out of the fridge. It was all twisted up! His-His eyes - “ 

Eddie used his inhaler again. Richie held his hand. He wasn’t urging him to continue this story, but if it made Eddie feel better then he didn’t say a thing. “He said ‘Time to float’ and that’s when he starting walking towards me doing this - this dance…”

“Like a walk?” Richie was only joking just to make Eddie feel better. The tears streaming down his face were thick. And his breathing was rapid. Clearly, he hadn’t stopped crying since they all made it to a safe place after scrambling out of Niebolt. 

It was Bill who had suggested that they call Eddie’s mother. Reluctantly, Eddie called her. The conversation was over the instant he told his mother that he broke his arm. Staying by his side, holding his friend as they waited for his mother, Eddie panicked. No matter how much Richie had assured him, it did little because Sonia Kaspbrak drove into the trash cans and pulled Eddie away, furiously. For a woman who wanted her son to live a cautious life, she wasn’t very gentle. That worried Richie.

Eddie shot him a glare, but he still understood what Richie was trying to do. “No, it was like he swooped his arms back and forth until he lunged at me. I hit his face trying to make him go away. He put his slimy hands all over my face! And he opened h-his mouth-”

The young boy burst into tears as Richie cradled him, wrapping an arm around his shoulder, holding him. Seeing people cry was terrible, but Eddie, that was the worst of all.

“You know what, Eds?” Richie asked him softly.

“What?” Eddie sniffled. 

“You’re so brave,” Richie whispered to him.

Eddie looked up at his best friend, surprised that Richie would say a deep thing like that. “Brave?”

“Hey, admit it! You battled against a killer clown and you won! I would have pissed my pants if I was in your shoes!”

Tears crawled down Eddie’s cheeks, staring back down at the sheets his mother just fetched out of the dryer. They were still warm.

“Rich.” It wasn’t a question. He was more just saying his name, feeling comfort out of it.

“What?”

“Do we have to kill that clown?”

Now he knew how his parents felt whenever he asked a question that he didn’t know how to answer in the first place. “Bill wants to. But, I don’t. Stan sure as hell doesn’t want to. To be honest, Eddie, I don’t know if I want to be friends with Bill now. We all just split.”

Eddie sniffled, whimpering. “It’s my fault.”

“Don’t say that.”

“I got hurt! If I didn’t get hurt then we all wouldn’t have had that fight!” Eddie blamed himself.

Richie took his face, holding it. He also dried the tears away. “Eddie, it’s not your fault. It could have happened to me. Or any of us.”

That didn’t make the situation any better. Eddie felt worse. “My mom won’t let me see you guys now.”

“Don’t let it get to-”

“Maybe that’s best.”

“Huh?”

“Just so my arm can heal. We can… take a break.”

Richie dipped his head, refusing to let Eddie see the anger boiling or the tears building up. That clown… he was winning.

“Is that okay, Richie?” Eddie asked him, trying to look at Richie’s face.

Getting off the bed, Richie immediately stormed towards the window. “Yup!”

Running down the dark streets, both boys cried alone at the unfairness of it all.


End file.
